Palmer says Lux attacked his 7-month-old son, inflicting several scratches, after the baby pulled its tail. He said he kicked the cat in the rear to make it stop, which only led the cat to get angrier.

Officers arrived at the home around 8 p.m., according to the Portland Oregonian, and used a catchpole to snare the cat, who had darted into the kitchen and jumped atop a refrigerator.

Police issued a press release about the incident Monday and by Wednesday it had gained international attention.

Palmer says the family has received proposals from people wanting to adopt Lux, but the family is not taking them up on it

While Palmer told officers the cat has a history of violent behavior, the family plans to keep him, and keep a close eye on him, he said.

“We’re not getting rid of him right now. He’s been part of our family for a long time.”

A Florida man who was angry with his mother tried to drown her two dogs in a nearby lake in Pompano Beach, tossing both of them into the water while they were enclosed in their crates, police said.

An animal control officer saved one of the dogs, a terrier mix. A second dog, a pregnant miniature pinscher, drowned, the Orlando Sentinel reported.

“This was just a despicable act,” city spokeswoman Sandra King said. King said a witness called authorities after seeing a man take the crates to the lake and toss them in. She said an animal control officer, who is also a diver, pulled the dogs from about 15 feet of water.

Deputies arrested Deangelo Veus, 29, who was jailed on two counts of animal cruelty. According to the Florida Department of Corrections, Veus spent about 19 months in prison for robbery, carrying a concealed firearm and felony driving with a suspended license.

“Emotion is one of the first things babies pick up on in their social world,” said BYU psychology professor Ross Flom, lead author of the study. Flom and two BYU students report their findings in the journal Developmental Psychology.

The new findings come on the heels of a study from the same lab showing that infants can detect mood swings in Beethoven’s music.

“We chose dogs because they are highly communicative creatures both in their posture and the nature of their bark,” Flom said.

In the experiment, the babies first saw two different pictures of the same dog, one in an aggressive posture and the other in a friendly stance. Then the researchers played – in random order – sound clips of a friendly and an aggressive dog bark.

Other than humans, who aren’t always real good at it, dogs are the only animals that can read emotion in human faces, scientists at England’s University of Lincoln claim.

Their research findings suggest (as most any dog owner knows) that dogs can see at a glance if we are happy, sad, pleased or angry.

According to the study, dogs, like humans, have developed something called “left gaze bias,” wherein, when we’re looking at a person’s face, our eyes wander left and examine the right hand side of that face.

Scientists believe the right side of the human face expresses emotions more accurately and more intensely, and that humans, stupid as we otherwise are, have figured that out, if only on a subconscious level.

Helfpul tip: If you’re having trouble figuring out which side of the face you’re looking at is which, think of the right hand side as the passenger side, the left hand side as the driver side. If you’re still confused, remember that the right side of the person’s face you’re looking at would be on your left, unless of course a mirror is involved. If you’re even more confused now, and getting angry about it, have your dog look at the right (passenger, unless you’re in Europe) side of your face. If he sulks and walks away with his tail between his legs, you are indeed angry.

But back to the study, which showed that dogs exhibit ”left gaze bias,” but only when looking at human faces. No other animal has been known to display this behavior before.

In the research, a team led by Dr. Kun Guo showed 17 dogs images of human, dog and monkey faces as well as inanimate objects.

Film of the dogs’ eye and head movement exhibited a strong left gaze bias (not to be confused with left wing bias) when the animals were presented with human faces. But this did not occur when they were shown other images, including those of dogs.

Guo believes that, over the centuries they’ve been associated with humans, dogs have evolved the left gaze bias as a way to gauge our emotions.